Re: [Openvpn-users] nobind?

[Jan J. K. <ja...@ni...>]

Hi Christian,

openvpn clients do *not* bind to local port 1194; they make a connection 
to the remote server at the remote port you specified. The local port is 
chosen at random (by the OS). Otherwise you also would not be able to 
have multiple openvpn client sessions running on a single PC (which I 
sometimes do).

HTH,

JJK

christian wrote:
> i have a frontend with an openvpn server and an openvpn client (to link 
> to some other faraway openvpn server) on slack12 machine, 2.1rc7.
>
> my openvpn server runs on address aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd, port 1194.
>
> when i start the client with
>
> client
> proto udp
> remote eee.fff.ggg.hhh 1194
> local aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
> nobind
>
> it can't:
> `Options error: --local and --nobind don't make sense when used together` 
> but it sure would make sense to bind to a *source address*, but not to 
> a *source port*, imho.
>
> if i leave out the 'nobind', result is, of course:
> `Socket bind failed on local address aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:1194: Address already in use` 
> - so it takes the default 1194 socket for client outgoing, instead of a 
> dynamic one (1194 being occupied by the sever on the same machine, of 
> course).
>
> is there a way to specify a source *address* while leaving the source *port* 
> selection to the system (1024...) on an openvpn client?
>
> thanks for reading!
>
> rtfms most welcome. :-)
>
> ps: yes, i know snat; that's the way i'm getting around the issue now. ;-)
>
>